


storge

by loyaulte_me_lie



Series: there are no bargains [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Difficult Parental Relationships, Gen, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, Journalist!Enjolras, Modern AU, Parental Death, Prequel, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 12:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15096938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Enjolras doesn't know how to deal with some unexpected news. The idea for the cafe is born.





	storge

**Author's Note:**

> Procrastinating my original writing this time by writing more of this verse. I know this whole idea has been played out before, but this is kinda my slant on it. Enjoy!

_"Parents kill more dreams than anyone" ~ Spike Lee_

*

He’s woken up by the phone ringing. Sitting up, he gropes for it, squinting at the square of blue-white light, the angry squall of his ring-tone against his sleep sensitive ears. “Hello?” he says, voice rough and grazed. An idle part of his mind wonders whether this is it, whether masked thugs will bust in the door of his apartment and drag him away, leaving nothing but wreckage and terrified friends to remember his passing.

“Hello. Am I speaking to Mr Rene Enjolras?”

He breathes out, slowly. “Who is this?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Sheriff Steve Moran, I’m with the Metropolitan Police Department. This is Mr Rene Enjolras?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Okay, thank you. I’m very sorry to have to make this phone call and disturb you…”

“My parents.”

“Yes. There was an accident, and well, they’ve passed away.”

Enjolras sits there for a second, clutching the phone. He exhales. “What kind of accident?”

“Car. Your father was drinking, and…they wrapped themselves around a tree.” A pause. “It would have been quick, but that is all I can offer you. I’m sorry. Please let me know if there is anything the MPD can do for you.”

“Of course. Thank you, Sheriff. Goodnight.”

*

He doesn’t cry. He sits in the dark and stares into space and wonders why there is morphine running through his veins; surely he should feel something, surely it shouldn’t be this much of a non-event in his head.

_Tonight, his parents died._

_God,_ he thinks, _can’t you even be happy?_

*

“Oh for God’s sake would you just SHUT UP!?” He shoves back his chair with a screech, something feral boiling under his skin. His friends stare at him, shocked silent. He tries to shove his books into his bag, but his eyes are swimming with tears and he can’t even think so abandons it, striding out of the door and slamming it behind him. Out on the street, people are pushing past, the acrid stink of smoke crawls up his nostrils and into his brain, and he wraps his arms around himself, digging his fingers fiercely into the gaps in his ribs.

“Don’t you dare cry,” he mutters to himself.

“Enjolras?” Combeferre’s voice is careful. Enjolras feels himself teetering, feels the tears climbing relentlessly up his throat. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” He turns his face away, knowing that Combeferre will read it as easily as a newspaper headline, hating himself for not knowing how to deal with this.

“You are aware that I’ve been able to tell when you’re lying since we were seven years old?”

“My parents died. Last night.”

“Oh Enjolras.” Combeferre puts his arm around Enjolras’ shoulders, leaning up. Enjolras curls into the warmth, ducking his head to bury his face in Combeferre’s hair. A taxi screeches past and he flinches. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I hated them.”

“I know.”

“I hated them, and they were awful but I’m still…why am I so upset over this? I’ve told them I want them to die so many times and I just I can’t…”

“Just breathe, okay? It’s perfectly natural to grieve, even though they were shitty. Logically I know you know that.”

Somehow, he finds himself sobbing, clinging onto Combeferre as tightly as he can. Someone knocks into them, shouldering past on the side-walk, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t _care._ His parents are _dead,_ and as much as he doesn’t grieve the people they were, he thinks he might be grieving for the parents he wishes he’d had. Eventually, the tears run dry, but he stays there, wrapped around Combeferre with Combeferre’s hands drawing abstract, soothing shapes over his back.

“Do you want me to tell the others?” Combeferre asks.

“If you want,” Enjolras mumbles.

“If _you_ want.”

“Yes. I had better apologise. They weren’t being annoying I’m just…I haven’t slept and I’m so…”

“They’ll understand. You know they will. Come on, let’s go back in – I’ll get Louise to make you a drink, and we’ll all look after you, come on.”

Enjolras dashes away his tears with the palm of his hand, straightens up, and follows Combeferre back through the door.

*

The funeral is as awful as he was expecting. Combeferre and Courfeyrac flank him the entire time, pressed close as he exchanges glacial small talk with the various relatives and friends who have squirmed their way out of the woodwork. He wonders, absently, how many of them have showed simply to say that they had seen the crazy runaway Enjolras boy, crawling back for his inheritance now his parents are lying cold and restless under their tombstones. The three of them escape the wake as early as is polite, and sit together under the tree he and Combeferre used to play in as children, knees pressed together and trading sips from Courfeyrac’s hip-flask.

“It’s a lot of money,” Courfeyrac says, three hours in. “Wouldn’t have thought they’d have left it all to you.”

“Better me than one of the gold-diggers,” Enjolras mutters. “They would have wanted to keep it in the family, even if it meant entrusting it to me.”

“Have you got any ideas?”

He and Combeferre exchange a look, and then he turns to Courfeyrac. “You know the café?”

“The café? You’re going to do it?”

“I think so. When I’ve had time to wrap up the latest project.”

“No way! Oh, I’m excited now. Can everyone help?”

“Of course.” Enjolras leans his head on Courfeyrac’s shoulder briefly, swallowing back the taste of alcohol. Courfeyrac raises the flask again.

“To the café-thing, whatever shape it decides to take.”

“To the thing,” Enjolras and Combeferre repeat. Enjolras closes his eyes, the alcohol making the blackness behind them swim with colliding space-junk ideas, wondering for a second what the future will bring.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @barefoot-pianist


End file.
